The Verge reported that CEO Sundar Pichai defended the layoffs and claimed that workers sometimes reach out to express gratitude for the cuts. “And I just want to clarify that, through these changes, people feel it on the ground and sometimes people write back and say, ‘Thank you for simplifying.’ Sometimes we have a complicated, duplicative structure,” he said, per the Verge.

CEOs are literally psychopaths. Even if this was true (and it’s a big company, so it might be), to claim this is a justification is pure unbridled dishonesty and the desire to say anything at all that removes the blame from your own shoulders.